Dance Improvisation Project Unites Arts and Sciences

March 8, 2006

Following a residency at Bennington College, dance faculty member Susan Sgorbati ’72, MFA ’86 will present the Emergent Improvisation Project, a series of new performance works that explore the emergent and complex natures of movement and sound improvisation. Collaborating in the creation of these pieces is an ensemble of six dancers, three musicians, a visual artist, a lighting designer, and a costume designer. The performances will take place at 8:00 pm on Friday, March 17, and Saturday, March 18, 2006, in the Martha Hill Dance Workshop.

Through a grant from the National Performance Network Creation Fund, this performance arose out of Sgorbati’s research into how groundbreaking theories of brain organization and natural systems currently are providing new insights into the basic processes of structuring and organization. Known as Emergent Improvisation, this work reveals the interrelationship between natural, complex systems and dance and music improvisation, exposing the scientific theories of self-organization, emergence, and complexity. In linking these time-based artistic practices to the emergent processes evident in nature, there is basis for a rich and textured inquiry into how systems come together, transform, and reassemble to create powerful means of communication. Observing and identifying natural phenomena informs and inspires the making and meaning of the creative work of Emergent Improvisation, where the matching of form and content reveals ideal conditions for a particular system or composition.

The Emergent Improvisations Project opened to a critically acclaimed review at The Neurosciences Institute in LaJolla, CA in early February. Following the performances on the Bennington campus, this program will be presented at other venues, including the Flynn Center in Burlington, Vermont, March 30-31, 2006, and the New England Complex Systems Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, June 25-30, 2006.

Sgorbati has been seriously investigating improvisation as performance for 20 years, the last five years, in collaboration with scientists. Her work has led her to two residencies at The Neurosciences Institute under the tutelage of the Institute’s founder and director, Dr. Gerald Edelman, and to a dialogue with Dr. Stuart Kauffman, who was in residence at Bennington College in the fall of 2004.

Sgorbati has taught dance at Bennington College since 1983. She created the improvisational ensemble, “material Prima,” which has performed at the Improvisation Festival in New York City, the Improvised and Otherwise Festival in Brooklyn, New York, and other venues in the United States. She has done residency workshops with The Flynn Center for the Performing Arts for the last several years, and is indebted to them for their support of her new work. Sgorbati is also a professional mediator, who mediates cases for the Vermont Attorney General’s Office and the Vermont Human Rights Commission. She holds the Barbara and Lewis Jones Chair for Social Activism at Bennington College. In 1999, she co-created Quantum Leap, a program that reconnects at-risk youth to their education. She was recently awarded the first annual David G. Rahr Community Service Award from the Vermont Community Foundation.

The Emergent Improvisation Project is a co-commissioning project by the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts in partnership with Bennington College, The Neurosciences Institute, New England Complex Systems Institute, and the National Performance Network Creation Fund. The Creation Fund is sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, Altria, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency). This work has received additional support from the Jerome Robbins Foundation, Bumper Foundation, and Bennington College.